On Comet, On Cupid, On Donner and...

...Chocolate Blitzen!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  We were busy bees with a couple of Christmas gatherings to attend.  For our annual family Christmas Party on Saturday I made these delicious shooters for everyone to enjoy...

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I saw this on pinterest a while ago and saved it in my files.  They were a big hit and they were oh so delicious!

Can you believe I never took a picture of the actual ones I made??  I should have because I made a few changes:  I poured the drinks into shot glasses (it's a pretty rich drink so a full glass might be a bit much) and instead of chocolate sprinkles around the edge, I put a Christmas mix of red, white and green (that was Darryl's suggestion which I like much more than the original)

The above link has the recipe in case you want to try some, but for a quick overview, the ingredients include chocolate ice cream (doesn't that alone have you sold??), vodka, Bailey's and creme do cacao.

Posts this week may be a little sporadic and less house-related.  Things are changing and picking up at work and this week is a bit crazy!

Do you have any favourite holiday drinks?  Have you pinned any that you are just dying to try?  Have your Christmas partiesbegun as well?

Other Christmas Trimmings

I've gone easy this year on the decor, mainly because we have just been so focused on the major final touches for living downstairs again, that I just want to sit and enjoy it all now.  Other than the tree, I've put up just a few things here...

A while back I bought a package of Christmas balls from Value Village for $1.99 and put a bunch of them in glass jars.  They're fairly close to the tree and I love how they catch the light and sparkle just a little brighter...



For next year, I'd like to maybe make a tray to put those glass jars on and add a few other things.  It also needs some major height, you can see how tiny they look haha...

But for this year, that's all.  I'm just wanting to enjoy sitting down here.  Next year, it's on!  Not that I ever really go all out anyways...

I hung our stockings on the hutch this year.  Normally I hang them on the staircase, but the stairs and railings are so nast from all the demo and dust I don't really want them touching.

To an outsider's view the stockings may appear a little creepy haha, but I love them so much.  Every one of my many cousins was each knitted either a Santa stocking or an Elf stocking by one aunt or another.  It's the only stocking I've ever had and I love my Santa.  My sister had the Elf in our family.  Once Darryl and I bought our house and he didn't have a stocking, I asked my aunt to make him one, and I think maybe there had actually been an extra laying around that they gave him.

And on the back door hangs our advent calendar which is also so special to me.  It's an exact replica of the one my sister and I, and several of my cousins grew up with.  Most of our aunts made one for their kiddies and every day we would alternate putting an ornament up on the tree.  And we'd love trying to figure out which ornament was newly added each day. 

A little closer...

A little closer still...

There she is in all her sequenced and felted glory

So the year my sister moved out and was about to have her first Christmas away from home, I wanted her to have a piece of home with her.  My mum, my dad and I all chipped in and made her an exact replica of the one we grew up with.  The next year I moved out and as my Christmas gift, my parents and my sister had all made me my own!  Oh, there were tears!

One thing I'll have to get back into next year is painting our front windows.  Growing up, my mum would paint these amazing Christmas scenes on our front bay window and I would love watching her work (and lay on the floor with my markers and paper and try to copy her) and seeing the painting every time I walked home from school.  And I loved how my dad would put out spotlights so her work could be seen at night too.  It's always been a great Christmas memory for me.

Our first Christmas here I wanted to try my own.  I wasn't sure how it would go or if I'd have the stamina to want to finish it, so I picked some really really simple Christmas cards to work from (I'm not great at free-handing but I can be a pretty good mimic!)...

I couldn't get rid of that glare!  You can kind of see the spots on Santa's shirt and the reindeer's back where condensation started dripping and erasing my paints away!  But now that we've updated our windows and they are no longer single panes nor 91 years old, I think that issue won't be a problem anymore.

Christmas for me is about traditions and memories more than anything else.  I'm a pretty sentimental gal so I couldn't dream about ever replacing my stockings or advent calendar, no matter how outdated they may be! 

What Christmas traditions do you love and remember from your childhood?  Have you carried them on into your own home?  Have you kept any retro Christmas decor?

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck...

...if a woodchuck could chuck all the wood on our main floor?

After moving everything down to the main floor we realized that we have got a lot of wood going on.  A lot of different types of wood and different stains of wood.  For now, and most likely for a while (we're not made of money!) it'll stay that way.  But it's not our fav, that's for sure. 

We have our new bamboo floors which have a reddish hue...

We've got our new butcherblock countertops which are blonde...



Now I know lots of people don't like mixing any wood tones and prefer to have them all match.  For us, we liked the contrast that the floors and the counters offered each other - they didn't clash or compete.  But thennn we brought down our dining table (a hand-me-down from my great-great aunt who must have lived in the time of tiny people because the table is so short!)...

And what ever happened to our 4th chair??? 

I don't know how to give you a proper scale of this short table, but just trust.  It's short.  I'm not sure how long it will last us either, it's cracking...

The two ends of the table are extended right now, and they are not held up very sturdily.  I'm not sure how well you can see in this picture, but only one of the two pieces are actually supporting the table extension...

(the piece closest to the camera is touching the tabletop, but the further one does not touch at all)  It's like that on the other side of the table too

Darryl has dreams of building our own dining table, I would love something like this...

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Then we brought down a hand-me-down hutch from Darryl's side (which he refuses to let me paint because "you just don't get this kind of wood anymore!")  My argument:  it's not an heirloom, it was a yard sale find, so let me at it!  I had great visions of painting it some fabulous colour, but keeping the top of the base piece stained and then wallpapering or stenciling the insides.  Ho hum...

Then our hand-me-down coffee table from my parents...

Some craigslist stools with an ebony stain...

And the newest addition of our couch's legs...

There's just too much wood!

What's your take on mixing woods?  Do you have any pieces that you're dying to tackle?  Do you also have a significan other who loves wood so much it pains them to change it??  ;)

Get A Handle On It...

The last thing we had to do in the kitchen in order for us to move down and use it again was to put on the hardware.  At first I wanted something like brushed nickel to match the faucet and the future stainless appliances we'd get.  But then Darryl saw a few kitchens like these, with white cabinets like ours, but black hardware...

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We love the contrast they offer and I think it makes them become a bit more of a feature, as opposed to blending in with everything else.  So yes, *gasp* we are mixing our metals!  And we are very happy with it...

Here's Darryl's uber official way of ensuring that the handles were all put in at exactly the same spot per door...

I thought it was pretty clever myself - he's very resourceful.  I would have been measuring each door and it would have taken me much longer!

Here are the doors, sans handles...

And with...

(Question: we keep debating back and forth over whether or not we should put handles on the faux drawers under the sink....what are your thoughts?)

And the other side of the kitchen...

(I probably should have shown you the pictures of our kitchen before I showed you those professional ones because lord knows I am far from a good photographer.  I'm not sure why these turned out so grainy...I have a terrible case of just snapping away with my little camera without really considering what is in the frame, what the lighting is like, shadows...I'll work on it!)

The hardware isn't pure black, they're more of a blackish-bronze?

They feel really nice in your hands!  We like the simple profile they have, they kind of reflect the simple shaker-style cabinets we chose.

Next week I'll show you some full pictures of what our kitchen is looking like right now (which by no means I'll be sharing "after" shots because it's still in progress, lots and lots left to do, including a backsplash which is fun!)

What's your hardware up to these days?  Are you updating it, or have you already?  Do you love what you have?  How do you go about choosing your hardware?

Thankful Ornament

Back in October we tried writing daily "thankful" notes, an idea we tried from YHL.  I really liked doing this all month, it really made me more aware of things to be grateful for and I think we might try it again next year! I pondered what I'd do with the papers once Thanksgiving was done and then it dawned on me - not long after Thanksgiving is Christmas. I decided to fill an ornament ball with all of our notes!

I didn't want us to have spent a month recording things we were thankful for and then to just throw our hard work and memories away after Thanksgiving passed!  This way I figure if it's something we'd like to do each year, I can label the ornaments with the year and we can have them to look back on. 

So I headed over to Michael's with a 40% off coupon, only to see that the balls were already 50% off - even better!

When I got home I rolled each of the papers up (to fit them better, and for some visual interest) and stuffed them in the ornament. 

Then I wrote "Thanks 2011" on the ball, tied a ribbon to it and hung it on our tree!  I love that it's an ornament that we've both had a hand in, normally all the handmade ornaments are all me, so this is a nice change of pace!





 And here she sits all pretty-like in the tree!



I'm linking up with the holiday craft party at Centsational Girl - there's so many great ideas to check out!

That's a Wrap

Did you all have a nice weekend?  We absolutely adored our first weekend down on our main floor!  We had a few people over for visits, some planned, some pop-ins and we loved them all!  Not having to trek people up to the second floor and squeeze them into a little bedroom felt so great.  Our pride in homeownership has returned!

We took a bit of a break house reno-wise and just enjoyed ourselves.  Yesterday I wanted to wrap the few presents I've bought off my list so far.  Initially I wanted to try out some DIY wrap like newsprint or embellished craft paper. Something like these...

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But then I thought it would be silly of me to go spend more money on new wrapping stuff when I have a container bursting with paper already.  So I decided to use paper I already had, but added my own touch with the name tags...

(I still have a ways to go, I'm hoping to cross a few more gifts off today!)

It took a while to cut everything out, but it's something I enjoy doing!  Maybe next year I'll try some newsprint/craft paper...

What's your wrapping like this year?  Do you add any DIY touches or do you prefer stuff that's pre-made?

Movin' On Down!

On Wednesday night we made the official and final move downstairs!!  It has been 1.4 years since we have lived in our main floor space and now we are officially using the kitchen and the dining/living area as they are meant to be used.  All in time for Christmas!  Wowee!  While we were working away on this, Darryl said "it's like we're in the last 10 minutes of one of those reno shows before the reveal and we've got so many little things to get done and we're on the clock"...or something to that effect.  But I thought, soo true!  And I'm so glad the reveal is finally here!  Honestly, every time I come down the stairs it's like a new reveal all over again because I just can't wrap my head around it all! 

Here's how our living space is looking now...

(mind the sheet serving as window coverings...they're on the to-do list as well!)

This doens't mean that we are done though.  It just means it is liveable finally.  But there is still plenty to be done, like window and door trim...

(no, your eyes are not deceiving you, that is a sock on the door knob...our temporary solution to stop the knob bashing into our brand new pantry)

On the back of the peninsula, the cabinets are exposed so we have yet to make it look more built-in....

We need to put a door on the downstairs bathroom (we're hoping to restore an old one from in our garage)

We have to fix a huge crack in the mudding on the beam...

This area above our ancient stove is waiting for an over the range micro-wave and a cabinet, but before we can do that we have to remove this wiring and re-route some of it...

And a few other things like putting toe-kicks on the cabinets (we're thinking of making them) and a backsplash in the kitchen.

So there's still lots to be done around here, but we are no longer banished to the second floor and my what a feeling that gives!
Have a great weekend!

Any big moves going on around you?  Still have those nagging "little things" to get done?  Any exciting weekend plans?